04-06-2011, 04:38 PM
The basic idea is that yes, the second example you provided is now what's required, though personally, I think some leeway can be allowed as thus:
He paused as the rabbit spoke -- a greeting akin to "good morning." Copper smiled and nodded enthusiastically, returning the greeting the best he could.
This way, a high-speech equivalent is offered without applying the translation directly to what was said. The main idea is that while there are a lot of basic messages that can be understood between high- and low-speech, direct translations don't really work. Mostly, this is to keep the intelligence/anthropomorphism levels between predators and prey more distinct -- things can get messy/weird if we have prey animals acting more and more like "people" and less like prey. x_x
As for prey animals learning basic high-speech words -- I think this is technically fine, especially amongst mammalian species. It would be worth keeping in mind that most prey animals won't hang around their predators long enough and/or care enough to learn even basic words though. A deer would flee any sound suggesting a wolf might be nearby; I can't really see it sticking around long enough to learn "hello," y'know? Naturally though, you're free to create circumstances where this might have happened. :3
He paused as the rabbit spoke -- a greeting akin to "good morning." Copper smiled and nodded enthusiastically, returning the greeting the best he could.
This way, a high-speech equivalent is offered without applying the translation directly to what was said. The main idea is that while there are a lot of basic messages that can be understood between high- and low-speech, direct translations don't really work. Mostly, this is to keep the intelligence/anthropomorphism levels between predators and prey more distinct -- things can get messy/weird if we have prey animals acting more and more like "people" and less like prey. x_x
As for prey animals learning basic high-speech words -- I think this is technically fine, especially amongst mammalian species. It would be worth keeping in mind that most prey animals won't hang around their predators long enough and/or care enough to learn even basic words though. A deer would flee any sound suggesting a wolf might be nearby; I can't really see it sticking around long enough to learn "hello," y'know? Naturally though, you're free to create circumstances where this might have happened. :3